


stay where you're needed (a half step behind and to his right)

by enflashings



Category: Nabari no Ou
Genre: M/M, fugitive lyfe au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:12:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enflashings/pseuds/enflashings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raikou and Gau defect from Kairoushuu, and find themselves on the run. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stay where you're needed (a half step behind and to his right)

**Author's Note:**

> AU from chapter 50 onwards. Sorry in advance for the fragmentary wonkiness and various other authorial misdeeds; this was sitting finished and unpublished for waaay too long. :')

The first time it happens, Gau pretends he doesn’t see.

In truth it’s easier to do so than he might have liked or expected from himself, but to not ignore it would be acknowledging the toll this is taking on Raikou, the very real risk their every act puts them in, and remembering the burn lingering in his muscles and lungs, unaccustomed to so much running but adapting fast.

Gau washes his hair in the sink, doing his best to avoid looking at the ofuro reflected in the mirror. There’s no time. Or there might be, in retrospect: there’s no way of knowing and no way he’s going to take the chance.

He leaves the bathroom to dry his hair. Raikou hasn’t moved, only lifting his head briefly when Gau is in his line of sight once more.  

Gau wants to tell him to at least lie down properly, let his breathing expand into his belly. He doesn’t dare say a word until it’s twenty minutes later and Raikou is unfolding himself and rising to his feet, pulling his hair into a high ponytail and asking Gau if they’ve anything left to eat.

Gau wishes they did, and wonders when they will next.

* * *

Raikou won’t lie when asked about it. There’s a silence he can’t help but keep building, around and between words that cannot be said, structures that do nothing more than stand testament to the homelessness of questions Gau turns out-of-doors.

“I’m sorry,” Gau gasps, managing the apology even now. He’s breathing like air is a jagged thing, a forearm braced against the wooden fence that will have to suffice as cover, Raikou thinks, if Gau can’t go on.

“Shh,” he says. There’s no sense in keeping a close watch out when they won’t be able to respond to it by moving, so Raikou watches Gau instead. His face is a misery, red and about to be streaked with tears, and he’s plainly trying to get his body to recover by sheer force of will. All it’s doing is clenching his muscles tighter, choking out each inhalation’s small gains.

Raikou unzips the front of Gau’s jacket halfway, enough to get a hand in to palm the side of his ribcage, the other pushing firmly against the front of Gau’s left shoulder until he’s less hunched over.

“Breathe into my hand,” Raikou tells him. Gau’s expression spares a confused look before defaulting back to exhaustion. Raikou rubs his hand along Gau’s ribs in entreaty: he tells himself they’ve always been this stark against Gau’s skin and the fabric of his shirt, though he has no baseline reference and no reason to presume either of them haven’t lost weight. “When you inhale, Gau, breathe into my hand.”

Gau sets his gaze to the ground between them in concentration. He gets in two deep breaths that Raikou can feel against his fingers before looking up. “Okay, let’s go, I can—”

“You’ll pass out,” Raikou says. The two shinobi who’ve been tracking them all day are quite near, making the hair on the back of Raikou’s neck stand up. He replaces his hand with Gau’s own. “Stay here. Keep breathing like that.”

“Raikou-san—”

“ _Stay here_ ,” he repeats, a surge of heat going through him that isn’t altogether due to the approaching fight. Raikou’s ashamed to realize he wants to take Gau by the shoulders and shake him, hard, even as he also wants to plead with him to please be safe, please just let me protect you the way I need to.

Nothing in Gau’s body language suggests he’s about to disobey Raikou’s order, and when he speaks his voice weaves certain and low between the peaks of his heavy breathing. “This is my fault. If it weren’t for me you could go faster and you wouldn’t have to fight as often; you’d stand a much better chance, Raikou-san.”

Raikou smiles before turning away and stepping back into the open street.

He won’t tell Gau to disbelieve the truth, but he doesn’t know how he can say to Gau that if it weren’t for him, Raikou wouldn’t want to stand a chance at all.

* * *

The second time it happens, Gau isn’t sure why.

They hadn’t been near a public transportation hub for four days, opting instead to hitchhike, Gau staying out of sight from the road until Raikou was absolutely satisfied that their driver was from the surface world and beckoned Gau to him.

The risks had been high—Gau hadn’t said a word about them and neither had Raikou, which was its own indicator—but the payoff now is equally high, having been driven well into Yamagata prefecture and a town remote enough for the rigid set of Raikou’s shoulders to soften as they walked to the shukubo.

The priests smile at the omamori tied to Raikou’s ponytail. They are the only guests, and are treated to a short tour before they are left time to explore the temple and its surroundings.

Gau is too exhausted to say it’s a productive task for him (in fact he can barely remember the way back to their room, although the temple is far from large), but he knows Raikou’s casual stride and curious expression are only there to mask the purpose of their walkabout. If they have to get out and get out fast, there will be no hesitation in Raikou’s actions.

Their five-tatami room has a single high window that is more for light than viewing. As Gau unrolls both futons for much-needed napping, he thinks it’s funny, how a room that might be claustrophobic is instead so comforting, four walls and rural anonymity surrounding them. He becomes aware that he’s hungry: his stomach growls, loud enough for Gau to hear it over the second futon’s unravelling.

He looks to Raikou, about to ask if he remembered what time dinner would be served, but words are smothered by the lump that rises in Gau’s throat at the sight of him, forehead resting against knees clasped by pale-knuckled hands.

The relief of temporary safety makes him heedless, or maybe more heedful of how each moment counts so much, the unbearableness of wasted time.

Raikou is trembling. When he apologizes, his voice is rain-soaked.

“It’s all right,” Gau tells him.

“That’s a lie,” says Raikou, bitterness solidifying his speech. Gau shakes his head even though Raikou can’t see it.

“It isn’t, Raikou-san. I know we’re still in danger, and that—we both really need regular meals and sleep, at this point, but I mean,” he swallows, despite knowing the lump in his throat will be there for as long as Raikou is distraught, “between the two of us. It’s all right.”

“This is my fault,” Raikou says, as though he hasn’t heard. “The very least I could do would be to shoulder the responsibility accordingly, instead of—”

“You’ve saved my life, on average, once a day since—since we left,” Gau interrupts. “And I know you’re not sleeping or keeping food down, Raikou-san. I’d be disgusted with myself if I thought you weren’t doing more than enough for me.”

A vicious shudder lurches up Raikou’s back, halting the tremble in him like a fever breaking. His next breath is an uneven gasp, and so too, the one after it, until Gau can get him to lift his head and give his chest and belly room to expand.

Though Gau is aware of time dragging, it’s more like water flowing downstream than an undertow; a movement that carries you with it rather than harms.

* * *

Gau only thinks about how awkward it would be, to be on the run for one’s life with someone with whom you’ve shared unrequited feelings, after he pulls away and there’s nothing but Raikou filling his immediate vision.

He’s not in the business of settling: if Raikou doesn’t feel the same way, then Gau will at least be able to live with himself for having tried and taken that risk. Gau’s regrets are all things he didn’t do, words he didn’t say, and he has no intention of adding to the list where Raikou is concerned.

Still. The last time Gau saw this look on Raikou’s face, he’d been lying among flowers, pain searing through the right side of his body and losing consciousness with the dim sense that he might not regain it.  

He’d apologized then, too.

* * *

Over dinner, Gau learns what cover story they’re using: it’s the one where Raikou is helping Gau escape an abusive homelife, and please don’t mention our being here to anyone who might ask, et cetera. Raikou’s a far more confident liar than Gau wishes he were, and Gau has resigned himself to the suspicion that it doesn’t take much suggestion for him to be seen as someone helpless.

* * *

“That was inappropriate,” Raikou intones, the instant the fusuma slides closed behind him. “I should never have taken advantage of you like that, in this situation.”

In another lifetime, Gau thinks he would have had the patience to unravel this in slow, safe motions over long afternoons and homecooked meals.

In this one, life is too short, and theirs might be even shorter than that.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for months,” he tells Raikou. “And you kissed me back, Raikou-san. It would’ve happened sooner or later,” he adds, knowing as the words come out that they’re truthful.

Unless you kissed me because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings, Gau thinks, just for the sake of a thoroughly considered scenario. The possibility doesn’t trouble him: he knows what Raikou’s face looks like when he’s trying to keep Gau from harm only Raikou thinks is there, and he hadn’t seen it in the space between Gau’s kiss and Raikou’s.

He doesn’t see it now, either, as Raikou takes a seat cross-legged on his own futon and folds his hands over his lap with composure before speaking.

“I might have hoped to have been able to consider this without the stresses of our—circumstances in effect.”

“My feelings for you aren’t new,” Gau reiterates. “Maybe I wouldn’t have acted on them if we weren’t—” he gestures to the room they are in, meaning the last two weeks of their lives, “but they haven’t sprung up in a stress-induced delusion or something, Raikou-san.”

* * *

Raikou thinks they’re probably going much too fast.

Outside their minshuku room, it’s a world blurred by snow and wind, weather that had let them get out of sight fast and fully.

Only one Kairoushuu shinobi. Raikou had been able to tell from the passenger seat of her car, reclined too far for any passenger in it or in the back seat, the way she’d never consulted a mobile phone.

The world of nabari existed in Tohoku just as surely as it did everywhere else in Japan, but dispersed and lackadaisically, too far removed from whatever squabbles the villages they’d come from years or decades ago to still be fully invested, even if they watched Hattori speak from their computer screens. Any agent would either be coming far from home or have impersonal, outdated information (or both), and after a month and more than several examples of the deadliness of Raikou’s blade, Raikou doubted their disposal was where the majority of Kairoushuu’s efforts were being concentrated.

He was far from saying they were safe, but with their sole pursuer in at least a week dead and half a day’s grace before that would be assumed, none of his instincts clamoured for him to keep moving and to presume ambush at every turn.

So, inside their minshuku room, Raikou is learning Gau’s body.

This is the third time they’ve been secure enough to pay these sorts of attentions to each other, and the first time Raikou has realized that he wants this to go where it will, wants the release and wants it not at some early hour, eyes raw from lack of sleep and hand gripped punishingly tight, leaving him tenser than he’d begun, but with Gau, his affectionate touches and encouraging looks.

Gau is never the first to glance away. If this is escape, they are going there together, and Raikou is too tired, too used to expecting uncertainty to shrug off Gau’s constancy, a gift he’s always known is more precious than anything.

Raikou has no desire to forget it’s Gau’s mouth coaxing his own open, Gau’s arms hooked restlessly around his shoulders and neck, Gau straddling his lap.

It’s easy to want him, and easy to take every step after the first down that path.

Half an hour ago, Raikou had come into their room after a post-dinner soak to find Gau in the act of unrolling their futons, so close they nearly overlapped. He’d flushed under Raikou’s gaze, but there’d been no apology, nothing put forth to soften the artlessness of the message.

Raikou had thought to evade its meaning, respond as though Gau had meant for them to pay off some of their sleep debt with an early turn-in. If Gau had dissembled, he might well have done. Instead he’d asked if Gau wanted to bathe.

He hadn’t really listened to Gau’s reply, if he’d even given one. The surface meaning had been irrelevant.

More relevant are Gau’s hands sliding beneath the collar of the yukata he’d come from the bath wearing, and the feeling of his own arousal, focusing and drawing inward like a knot pulled tight.

Too fast, for the clumsiness of their kissing, Gau tilting his head too soon and sucking Raikou’s lower lip too hard.

Raikou supposes it’s hormones and biology and stress that have him laying Gau down onto his back, as smoothly as he can (not very, fault of the bucking of his hips and the greed of Gau’s hold), rather than sense.

Guilt is entirely out of Raikou’s reach with Gau underneath him like this, skin flushing a deeper red as he undoes the yukata’s obi, and deeper still in self-consciousness when Raikou bats his hands away from his belt, the fly of his jeans.

It’s better to focus elsewhere while Gau pulls off his button-up shirt, not slowing to negotiate a single button more than necessary.

Much too fast, thinks Raikou. A lifetime too early for him to have the right to—

“Please don’t,” Gau asks him, near-whispering. “Please don’t, Raikou-san.”

His physical strength is nothing to Raikou’s. Raikou lets himself be pulled down into Gau’s arms anyway: he can ignore the burn behind his eyes for as long as Gau is touching him.

“Don’t,” Gau says again. There’s a tremble in the hand he slides down between them to find and fuel the ache seering the base of Raikou’s spine. “Don’t, it makes no sense, I care about you so much—”

Raikou shifts until he can touch Gau where he needs.

After, they lie curled underneath the discarded yukata, too tired to fetch a blanket, the two of them nothing more than heat and heartbeat.

Raikou shivers once, a wave at last swallowed up by the shoreline, and follows Gau into sleep.

* * *

They don’t talk about it, but Gau can tell from the quality of Raikou’s silence that he’s contemplative rather than upset. It’s something to do with the press of his hand to Gau’s back as they board yet another highway bus, the way he tucks untied pink hair behind his ear while discussing their next move.

Gau just feels good, the simple satisfaction of everything being in its place.

They get off a stop early from their intended destination and walk the rest of the distance, to throw off the timing should anyone be tracking them from bus schedules. It’s a long, straight road flanked by forest on either side that goes on longer than it should.

After twenty minutes, Gau is reaching for Raikou’s hand, only to have Raikou grab his arm instead, the sound of a car engine like flint striking and sparking Gau’s adrenaline.

They have to go slowly and carefully at first, so as not to disturb a wide swathe of the forest edge that would give them away and make running useless. Gau hates this part: all he wants to do is bolt, blood pounding in his ears and a tremor rattling his ribcage, but Raikou’s grip is firm, leading Gau underneath a branch he’s raised, his voice low and uncompromising when he tells Gau to step over as much underbrush as he can.

Raikou’s back blocks Gau’s entire sightline, the both of them crouched down behind a log not six metres from the road. He listens as the car approaches, hoping not to hear the pitch change from a dropped gear, the pressure of brakes being applied.

The slam of a car door, and then another. The scuff of dress shoes against pavement. Shushed voices. Goosebumps on Raikou’s forearms, where he’s rolled up his sleeves.

Gau thinks, At least I won’t die a virgin.

He puts a hand on Raikou’s midback in silent apology for the moment of irreverent doubt.

The voices get louder. Gau can’t make out the words, but he knows from the increase in volume that they’re not expecting to find Raikou and Gau. Relief floods through him, dowsing his adrenaline until it’s reduced to a smoulder. Raikou doesn’t react at all, doesn’t move until they can no longer hear the car’s engine: when he does, it’s to direct Gau further into the woods.

“That wasn’t good, was it,” Gau asks, after several minutes and several inches of mud edging up his boots.

“No,” says Raikou, with uncustomary curtness. “We must’ve been sighted earlier today.”

Gau says nothing in reply, his own frustration rising to echo what he’d heard in Raikou’s voice. A week of nothing, the agent yesterday, and two today. There’d be someone looking for them in every town within a day’s journey, now.

Raikou isn’t the type to mutter under his breath, but Gau knows his thoughts as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud: they’d presumed too much, gotten incautious, and they will pay for it dearly.

* * *

Crowds plant dread in Gau’s belly, to bloom later into panic and fear and an awful edge to Raikou’s voice. He doesn’t know if this feeling will fade, once they aren’t being hunted down; he doesn’t know if such a time will come for them at all.  

Gau has never regretted their work as wakachi. Justice without mercy is only a more desperate judgement, pragmatics borne to their logical conclusion. He wonders, though, if any of their marks had felt the way he does, adrenaline rubbing his nerves raw, cutting his courage to the very quick.

At least they all had known what they’d done.

He knows a certain bracelet still circles Raikou’s wrist.

* * *

They get a room on the highest floor Raikou can negotiate, 17 in a 20-storey hotel building. It’s twice, nearly three times as expensive as all their accommodations so far; Gau thinks there should be a discount for their late evening check-in time but none is offered and neither of them want to prolong the interaction. The hospitality clerk is already giving Raikou disapproving looks that have nothing to do with the long minutes he takes finding bills scattered about their bag of essentials, and everything to do with the concerned frowns with which she keeps trying to catch Gau’s eye.

He hopes Raikou hasn’t noticed. He shoots her a glare while they wait for the elevator door to close, despite knowing it hurts their forgettable presence to anyone who might ask her later.

The blinds and drapes are already closed when Raikou lets them in, one arm curled around Gau’s back and the other on the katana he’d unwrapped in the elevator.

No foes materialize from the bathroom nor the room itself.

There are two beds. Gau is sure he overheard Raikou state off-handedly that one would suffice, and hopes that clerk isn’t on-shift for questioning whenever Kairoushuu’s people show up. He flops onto the bed furthest from the window, pushed against the bathroom wall, but not before shrugging out of his coat (draping it neatly over their bags) and toeing out of his boots, placing them in vague approximation of neatness at the foot of the bed, his socks atop them.

Raikou is running masking tape over the narrow space between the door and wall, ceiling and floor, two strips over the peep hole, and finishes by moving the uncomfortable-looking armchair in front of the door.

It gives them seconds, not security. Gau knows he should be checking out the thickness of the bathroom door, but he’s tired and Raikou seems restless enough to go through their entire checklist himself, scoping the room with an urgency that mars his everpresent gracefulness.

He tosses his coat onto the bed Gau isn’t occupying. There’s no sense in telling him to hang it up properly. Gau closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, the bathroom light is on. He can hear the sound of a weak blow dryer. It reminds him of normality, and if he hadn’t opened his eyes, Gau might have pretended he’d open them on Raikou’s apartment, himself asleep on the floor by the low table, Raikou refusing to hear his apologies for failing to take himself home, one floor above.

The blow dryer blusters on, and Gau, far from resentful of moments alone prior to this unfortunate adventure, fidgets under its noise and Raikou’s absence from his sight. The wet hems of his jeans are dampening his ankles and heels enough to make him regret having taken off his socks.  

Would anyone expect them to be able to pay this much for a hotel, or to set foot in a city at all? His eternal optimism heaves a sigh of relief; the pragmatic voice in Gau’s head is at least satisfied enough to look forward to a decent eight hours of sleep.  

Something else in him stretches out, slow and pointedly.

Gau sits up and takes off his pullover, flinging it to join Raikou’s coat. When his belt adds to the modest pile, Gau tells the something that’s lolling about him, relaxed but unpersuadable, that it’s because the buckle would dig into his skin and wouldn’t be comfortable to sleep in.

The blow dryer is still going. He could fall asleep to its drone, so that’s what he intends to do, stripping off his jeans and nestling into the bed proper, loosening the sheets the way he likes, warm despite being down to boxers and a thin cotton t-shirt.

When the bathroom light and blow dryer both switch off, Gau realizes all the other lights are still on.

“Raikou-san,” he says, looking at the ceiling rather than at Raikou, and then at the dark corners of the room when Raikou flicks off the remaining lights and Gau lets his hand finally slip below the waistband of his boxers, closing his eyes entirely as Raikou lifts the covers for himself a few moments later. “Raikou-san—”

“I know,” Raikou tells him.

Gau doesn’t know much about foreplay (or about sex at all, really) but he knows he’s all right with skipping it when Raikou’s skin is hot against his own and the only thing he wants to do is get off, possibly from rubbing against the thigh braced between his own, or alternately—

Raikou’s hips roll, the movement itself as minute as its effect on Gau isn’t.

Alternately, Gau thinks.

Raikou doesn’t make noise. Gau isn’t about to say that’s an absolute statement, only one that’s been the truth for their handful of shared experiences. He’s used to looking for small things, minor giveaways that tell the story Raikou’s placid smile won’t. Silence doesn’t bother him.

It’s just that he’s started to wonder how Raikou can manage that, when he pulls sound from Gau as easily as drawn wellwater, until they’re more like the crisp hit of a raindrop against a window, brief and ready for the next to make its own collision.

There’s too much to feel.

* * *

The room is bright, even with the morning sun diluted by curtains. Gau carefully tilts his head in the direction of the digital clock: nine-thirty.

Raikou is breathing against the crook of his neck and shoulder, chest and belly expanding against Gau’s side with the deep and natural rhythm unique to sleep. Assuming he slept through the night, that’s nearly eleven hours. It won’t make much of a dent on Raikou’s sleep debt, Gau knows, but it feels like a minor miracle all the same.

The last thing Gau wants to do is wake him. Their meagre funds can’t afford to miss the check-out time at eleven, and, much more critically, they can’t afford to stay here and make naive assumptions about their safety.

He palms Raikou’s shoulder joint and lets his hand meander where it will, a lackadaisical trail of caresses to his upper arm, shoulder blade, nape.

Raikou wakes as slowly as Gau intended him to, a gradual shift in his breathing and a preemptive flex of the muscles in his back signalling lucidity a few full moments before he lifts his head. Gau’s skin prickles under the heaviness of his gaze, Raikou’s eyes glancing to the same digital readout Gau had consulted not five minutes earlier, and then returning.

What are you thinking, Gau wants to ask, disquieted that he cannot tell. He’s about to bite his lip in forbearance when Raikou leans in and gives his lips something different to do.

I love you, Gau thinks, because what else does he have to answer with, to offer the weight in Raikou’s expression? In the end, not even that: they are silent until they quit the room and Raikou says: “Let’s take the stairs.”

* * *

Gau doesn’t know they’re being followed.

It’s an advantage, however slight, and Raikou won’t surrender it on the chance that Gau’s ability to deceive has radically improved. Someone who thinks they haven’t been noticed will, most times and for most people, get that much bolder, that much more complacent that a successful mission is within their grasp.

That much more likely to make a mistake and create opportunity thin enough for Raikou’s blade to cut through it.

He leads Gau down a dead-end alley at last, hemmed in by buildings, a pocket with a single opening.

“Um, this looks like a dead-end, Raikou-san,” Gau is saying. Raikou can see his hands going to the front of his jacket, touching but not toying with the zipper, in his peripheral vision. He has the suggestion that they pull out the city map on the tip of his tongue when tonight’s assigned Kairoushuu agent steps into the alley.

He’s dressed like a salaryman, although carrying a hanbo rather than a briefcase.

Lately, no one’s been offering much in the way of conversation. There’s nothing new to say on either end that can’t be communicated by the crisp sound of a katana sliding from its sheath.

Gau stays exactly where Raikou needs him to be, a half step behind and to his right.

* * *

Raikou’s abdomen is all bruise, savagely florid. It’s a courteous reminder that Raikou had focused too much on avoiding being disarmed or pressed into defense, and not enough on protecting himself from body strikes. There hadn’t been room to register it at the time, Gau only metres away and a clear opening that he might not have seen again, had he wasted it to acknowledge pain.

Gau had picked up the katana and wiped it clean while Raikou had thrown up right then and there, once for the blow itself, and again for the agony of having clenched his stomach muscles.

They can’t be safe here, crammed into the restroom they’d slipped into unnoticed, at the back of a Lawson whose clerk was preoccupied with demanding high school students.

Raikou knows he’s breathing too fast, his chest heaving. The thought of inhaling into his belly is dizzying and he has to clench the edge of the sink counter to keep himself from swaying or worse, increasing the pressure of Gau’s fingers.

“At least let’s buy an ice pack,” Gau says, voice pitched almost to begging. He’s kneeling to touch Raikou’s left side, the upper reaches of the bruised area, and blinking away tears. “Raikou-san—”

“I’ll be fine,” Raikou breathes. He wraps a hand around Gau’s, squeezing until Gau releases his shirt hem and pulls his touch away. Gau twines their fingers together before rising to his feet. “I will, Gau. How close are we to a train station?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I have no idea, Raikou-san, I’m—”

“How close,” Raikou asks again, pushing himself off the counter and reaching for his share of the bags Gau is scrambling with one-handed. Gau twists away from him as much as he can without letting go of Raikou’s hand, eyes brimming with tears, so Raikou reaches for the restroom door instead.

“Um, forty minutes? An hour,” Gau sniffles. He stumbles a little as Raikou half-pulls him through the conbini. Raikou wants nothing more than to stop and take Gau’s face into his hands and say something, anything reassuring, kiss him until he remembers how much strength he has. They have to keep moving. “An hour’s walk, Raikou-san.”

“When you get tired,” he tells Gau, shoving his awareness of the ache that spasms through his belly with every stride down far enough that he can almost ignore it, “just tell me, and I’ll take the bags.”

“I won’t,” Gau hisses. He trades Raikou’s hand for a more balanced division of carried weight.

By the time they reach the station and have paid too much for an overnight train, Gau’s arms are shaking.

Raikou doesn’t mention it.

“I’ll be fine, Gau,” he promises again, soft-spoken words in a nearly full train.

Gau doesn’t protest, but the fierceness of his concentration as he pours over regional maps and transit timetables is all displaced worry, keeping him up and Raikou company through the night.

* * *

They’re down to three-thousand yen and an inconsequential rattle of coins Gau can hold in one hand.

He knows how to make ends meet, years of watching his mother negotiate with landlords and local governments having ingrained the more formal processes of it into him. Gau also knows the value of simple social connections, be it a sympathetic neighbourhood association or a grocer who might give them almost-expired food at no cost if they came shortly before closing.

What he doesn’t know is how these experiences can possibly apply when they’re changing location nearly every day and taking pains to avoid leaving a paper trail or a specific impression.

With the veneer of domestic caretaking stripped away and when even the simple acts that go into keeping them off the streets are things Gau can’t do, it’s impossible not to realize how profoundly useless he is to Raikou.

Which is why Gau is currently trying hard to keep tears at bay, sitting at an enclosed bus stop with Raikou while the deepening of night turns rain to snow.

“What’s wrong,” Raikou asks. He leans in close when Gau doesn’t answer, pressing their sides together and placing a gentle hand on Gau’s thigh before repeating the question.

His kindness only makes Gau cry harder. He chokes out as much of an explanation (an apology, really) as he can regardless, because it is the very least he owes Raikou.

Raikou just lets him sob and muddle his sentences. Gau is halfway through telling Raikou that they should split up when he’s interrupted by a painful clenching of the hand on his leg.

“No,” says Raikou, with absolute calm.

“I-I’m sorry,” Gau stammers. He’s certain he’s violated something between them, given voice to something unforgivable: he couldn’t say what. “Raikou-san, I’m only thinking about—”

“You would be killed,” Raikou tells him, in that same unwavering tone. “It would be a matter of when, not if.”

“I know,” Gau whispers, screwing his eyes shut and trying to ignore the way his thigh is starting to ache. “I know, but that’d be okay if it meant you—”

“I don’t want that.” Though the bus won’t be there for another ten minutes at least, Raikou rises to his feet. He stops at the border of the bus stop shelter, demarcated by wet and dry concrete. There’s no katana wrapped and slung across his back, nothing in his hands or at his hip: the absence of a weapon worries Gau less than the knowledge that Raikou must be near or at his limit, to have lost his sword in the morning’s skirmish. “I hope you won’t bring this up again, Gau.”

Gau waits for the bus to arrive before standing and going to Raikou’s side. They’re the only passengers apart from a middle-aged salaryman sitting close to the front and having a familiar conversation with the driver. It leaves their usual spot (towards the back but out of the immediate sight of anyone boarding) free, so that’s where Gau slides their two remaining bags and himself following.

They’re intending to travel to the end of the line, an hour and a half away. Gau would nap but he wonders if that might only exhaust him further, remind him more acutely of the sleep he isn’t getting.

His socked feet are cold when he slides them out of his rain boots. He arranges himself sideways on the seat, facing Raikou and wrapping his arms around his knees. Gau ceased to care about the etiquette of this sort of thing weeks ago.

The bus makes a turn, and Gau’s toes prod Raikou’s thigh before he can retrieve them. “Sorry.”

“Gau,” says Raikou, “I didn’t mean to give the impression that I was angry with you.”

“You’re allowed to be,” Gau replies, staring at the dull patterns in the seat upholstery and resting his chin between his knees, even though the roads could be smoother and he keeps getting bumped around.

“I’m not,” Raikou corrects. He glances at the space between his leg and Gau’s feet for a moment before shuffling over, covering Gau’s freezing toes with his thigh. Gau sucks in a breath. Raikou pays that no mind as he leans over to circle Gau’s shoulders with one arm, the other pressing against the back of the seat in front of them for balance. His lips are warm on Gau’s forehead, his nose and—when Gau feels ready to lift his head—his own lips, too.

The salaryman and bus driver are still talking, laughing at whatever ordinary people living ordinary lives laugh at. “Raikou-san, here isn’t—”

“You understand, right?” Raikou asks.

“Yes,” says Gau, unsure if he does.

He doesn’t know why either of them won’t or can’t just say it directly, but he suspects they are both evasive for the same indefinable reason.

They sleep in a park, and Gau is only half-awake as he follows Raikou to who-knows-where, come morning.

* * *

Raikou has Gau call the real estate office from a payphone.

“He’s out of town for the next week,” Gau reports as he hangs up, his frown telling Raikou that he doesn’t understand the purpose of the phone call. “But we can’t afford to rent an apartment right now, Raikou-san.”

They’re down to sharing a bowl of instant ramen once a day. Raikou has to smile at Gau’s diplomacy. “Let’s go back.”

They don’t wait at the building entrance for long before a harried mother tugs her irritated preschooler outside, scarcely glancing at him when he catches the door for her.

“After you,” he invites Gau.

In the absence of an elevator, Raikou has a brief tussle with the locked stairwell door and both of them are silently unenthusiastic about the five flights of stairs, though the apartment for rent itself takes mere seconds to lockpick their way into.  

Gau looks about himself uneasily. Raikou wants to smile and apologize for only managing to get them a 1LK, and an unfurnished, older one at that, but refrains.

* * *

“You two,” Yukimi sighs, by way of greeting, “are real pains in the ass to find, y’know that?”

“That’s the point, sempai,” answers Raikou, carefully. He keeps his posture relaxed as he takes a small step in front of Gau, left hip angling towards where Yukimi stands, looking annoyed, in the doorway. “Did you need something?”

“Yeah, a cup of sugar,” snorts Yukimi. When Raikou doesn’t reply, he sighs again, pushing his headband up with his thumb before holding the same arm out in mock surrender. The movement draws Raikou’s attention to the flutter of an empty sleeve. “C’mon, Raikou, I’m literally unarmed here—”

“We don’t know that,” interjects Gau, tone sharp enough to merit Raikou turning to look at him. In the awful fluorescent light, the dark circles under his eyes are even starker. Raikou looks back at Yukimi. “We can’t be sure of that at all, Yukimi-san.”

“Well, nothin’ in life is certain,” offers Yukimi, with false cheer, “but I’m pretty damn sure I’m no longer welcome at the very special ninja clubhouse.”

Raikou can remember the vagaries of their investigation of Yukimi’s rebellious activities, can even walk himself mentally through some of the steps of their fight. The cause, the reason is dispersed to air like lingering smoke, present but ephemeral. Yukimi holds his gaze steadily, the same uncertainty to be found at the core of his expression.

He cannot imagine Kairoushuu would consider Yukimi fit to send as an assassin, now. The conclusion loosens the stranglehold wariness has in Raikou’s chest.

“All right,” he says. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

Yukimi steps into the genkan and then into the room proper with a smug grin. “Don’t need anythin’. Same ain’t true for you two, is it?”

Raikou has never found Yukimi difficult to deal with in any sense, so it’s a little worrying to feel like each of his sentences are fraying away at Raikou’s nerves and composure that much more, stoking a burn beneath his skin that just wants this conversation to be over.

He smiles, dredges up a laugh. “Sempai, you’re no good at being coy.”

Yukimi gestures at their two bags huddling against the wall. “That all you’ve got?”

“Are you taking inventory,” Gau hisses, breaking out of his position behind Raikou and moving to defend their possessions. Yukimi’s already picked up one duffle bag, which Gau protests with a squawk and a lunge. “Hey—!”

His hand’s come to grip the empty sleeve. There’s a pause, and Gau goes beet red, releasing his hold.

“Y-you can’t just grab people’s things like that,” he says, mustering up indignation from what reserves, Raikou has no idea. “It’s rude and—”

“Raikou,” drawls Yukimi, “I’ll give ya both a ride if you can get your idiot tenpa to shut up for five minutes.”

Gau is some syllables into his retaliatory remark, but Raikou pays that no mind, pinching Gau’s nose enough to block the flow of oxygen as he answers. “Thank you, sempai.”

* * *

Raikou keeps Gau more or less subdued for two intersections, before realizing that Gau has more energy than he does and abandoning the effort.

There’s a lot to learn about and catch up on, even if most of it has to be intuited from what Yukimi isn’t saying, topics he jokes about a little too much. Gau stopped trying to take comprehensive notes a lifetime ago and it’s clear he’s out of practice, balancing his notebook on his thigh and the back of the front passenger seat by turns. He asks Yukimi to repeat himself with more annoyance than Yukimi probably deserves, especially with how patient he’s being with Gau’s own rapidfire summaries.

Raikou doesn’t know where he and Gau will fit into any of this. It will have to be enough to know they can consider themselves de-prioritized and de-targetted, returned without fanfare to the comparative (but still nebulous) safety of anyone involved in the world of nabari.

“Lucky break, huh,” Yukimi notes, glancing at Raikou in the rear view mirror. Raikou says nothing even as Gau scoffs.

“We were doing fine,” he informs Yukimi, a flippancy to his tone they all know is artifice. “Raikou-san doesn’t need luck.”

Yukimi doesn’t reply, and Raikou stays equally silent. Gau sets his notebook flat on his lap where he stares at it for a few moments before returning it to the bag at his feet.

When he speaks again it’s to Raikou, just his name told to him in a quiet voice. Raikou wants to find words, seeking them out in Gau’s expression, but none materialize.

“It’s a long drive,” Yukimi says. “I ain’t playing road games with either of you, so—”

“Gau,” Raikou adds, dodging his gaze, “do you think you can sleep?”

It’s a good skill, being able to get rest wherever and whenever you need it. Gau huddles against the car door and curls socked feet up underneath him, asleep in the time it takes for Raikou to feel guilty that he wore the expression that says it’s an order, not a question.

Yukimi lets out a sigh that turns into a groan halfway through. “So.”

“There’s nothing Gau hasn’t told you,” Raikou says. Yukimi just continues to look at him in the rear view mirror. “Yukimi-sempai, you should keep your eyes on the road.”

“If I ever need a shortcut into a ditch, you’ll be the first I ask for drivin’ advice.”

“Holding onto things like that isn’t healthy,” murmurs Raikou.

“You look like shit,” Yukimi states, flatly. “And I bet you feel worse.”

“I’m not going to be so inconsiderate as to complain about my physical condi—”

“Knock it the fuck off, Raikou.”

Raikou concentrates on his folded hands, the tension in the neck muscles that keep his head up. The only sound from Gau is that of deep breathing, so Raikou concentrates on it, too, letting all these things fill up whatever parts of him have been exhausted into hollowness.

He shakes his head at the expectant silence filling the car.

The window is cool against his cheek. He won’t sleep, not trusting where the transition from there to waking will take him, what he’ll lose in the exchange, but roads at night are as dark as dreaming.

* * *

They eat bento for late breakfast, not without strife. Raikou has to take Gau outside the conbini before he loses his temper entirely over the indignity of Yukimi paying for them. “This’d be beer money otherwise, tenpa—be grateful,” he’d said, with a consolatory pat to Gau’s head that was imprudent, Raikou had thought, for someone who ostensibly wanted to keep his remaining arm.

Raikou can tell Gau slept very well from the enthusiasm of his tirade, which persists even after Raikou steers him to sit on the hood of Yukimi’s car as a gesture of cooperative vengeance.

* * *

Yukimi never asked them if they wanted to go to Banten, and Raikou doesn’t know what they’ll do once they get there.

“I’m just gettin’ my cat,” Yukimi explains, clarifying nothing. “Ain’t staying long.”

 


End file.
